Adjusting Macros

Overview

Today we’ll add to your knowledge base. I want to emphasize again how mastering these basics is crucial to long-term success. This is not “beginner level stuff” - this is the bread and butter and if you read carefully what I have to say and then apply it in real life you’ll make progress, I guarantee you that.

How To Adjust Calories & Macros

With your calories and macros set you’re ready to get to work. Whether you want to lose fat or gain muscle - Day 1 in the course showed you how to estimate your numbers.
Now what?The first thing you want to do is… wait. Yeah that’s right, wait. Never ever tweak your macros on a daily basis. It causes you to develop a bad habit that will have you constantly think about your numbers and look for things that are wrong, even though there’s nothing wrong because you’ve only been on your current numbers for a few days.

Once you’ve estimated your numbers (calories & macros) stay with those numbers for at least 7 days. I don’t care if weight goes up or down or if your cat dies in the meantime because you fed it too much pre-workout. Just stick with those numbers and wait it out. Weight yourself every 2 or 3 days to see where you’re headed but don’t change anything!
After 7 days check your bodyweight.

Go by the following numbers as a guideline:

If your goal is fat loss, look for a 0.5 - 1% decrease of your bodyweight per week.

If your goal is muscle gain, look for a 0.5 - 1% increase of your bodyweight per week.

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Let’s assume you’re weighing 170 pounds and your goal is fat loss. In that case you should lose between 0.75 - 1,7 pounds per week to make reasonable progress. If that is not the case we need to adjust your calories since you’re most likely not in a calorie deficit - which is required to lose bodyfat.
Remember the numbers I gave you on Day 1 of this course? Here they are again:
If your goal is to lose fat, set your calories as follows:11-13 calories per pound of bodyweight
If your goal is to build muscle, set your calories as follows:16-18 calories per pound of bodyweight
All you have to do now is adjust the number you’ve used to set your calories (the multiplier).

Let’s use our 170lbs guy as an example again.

He wants to lose fat and set his calories, multiplying his bodyweight by 13. That gives him a total 2210 calories per day. All he has to do now is multiply his bodyweight by 12 which gives him 2040 calories per day.
Where should we cut those calories? From protein, carbs, fat or all of them?Never adjust protein, always adjust carbs/fats based on your personal preference. In this case let’s assume the person prefers carbs, so we’ll cut calories from fat. If it’s the other way around and you prefer fats and therefore cut carbs, that’s obviously perfectly fine.
2210 - 2040 = 170 calories.
170 calories / 9 = 19 grams of fat (rounded)
So we’ll cut 19 grams of fat and see what happens with his bodyweight over the next week.
If he loses 0.5 - 1% of his bodyweight, we change nothing. It is not a must that adjustments have to be made every week.

Fat loss is not linear.

Be patient and only adjust your numbers when you don’t fall in the 0.5-1% of your bodyweight range. That goes for fat loss and for muscle gain. Nutrition is largely based on consistency and patience. It is normal that progress stalls when you try to lose fat or gain muscle. That doesn’t mean you did anything wrong, it just means you have to make a change. So don’t panic when the scale doesn’t move. Adjust your calories as you just learned and wait for the results in a week.

Again, do not adjust your numbers between weeks. You make 1 adjustment per week and that’s it.

Let’s summarize this madness:

Look for a 0.5 - 1% decrease in bodyweight per week (if fat loss is desired),

look for a 0.5 - 1% increase in bodyweight per week (if muscle gain is desired),

if you did not gain/lose the desired amount of bodyweight, adjust calories by adding/subtracting by 1 to your calorie multiplier,